Yeah, exactly. Almost the only thing hardware has over software anymore is the UI. When a piece of hardware’s UI becomes less immediate, fun, or intuitive than software, may as well use software.

One might say, it’s more focused than, and you will always have the “problem”, that a Launchpad, Launch Control or any other MIDI controller are not specifically made with a UI workflow in mind, like i.e. the Elektron boxes do.

For clarification, I’m no hardware gear nut, because especially for digital synths like this, it’s hard to justify a price tag of 2k for a software with knobs. In the end, it’s the user experience, I buy hardware for, not the sound. You can have any sound (yes, also analog or analog sounding, fight me, bros), but it’s the approach to making, creating, finding new sounds, that makes me buy hardware.

In this regard, I can’t recommend the modwave module enough. It’s flys so low under the radar and has gotten so dirt cheap, has a software integration and a software version and is so insanely powerful. I mean… it strikes the perfect balance between usability and giving you outboard controls and sound. In the end, any Serum, Phaseplant or Pigments will be more powerful and I just think, that there’s a physical limit of what you can build as a hardware UI, before it gets incredibly expensive like the Waldorf stuff.

Long story short… I think the value to money ratio on this one is a bit steep for what it is (also it’s butt ugly, but that’s my opinion). I use the modwave with the Launchpad Pro for performance, btw. Two octaves so I can play splits and then the four macro knobs mapped as faders. Super fun.

Mayer MD850 (which actually has 8 extra voices!). Yeah, not going to go for these things either. Those need to come with an editor, which will turn them into preset boxes with some live controls. I suppose there’s a market for these though.